Some of the footage shown in the introduction video is repeated in the video included in this post, but only a small element. The previous video was edited by Nordic Music Days to satisfy their publicity requirements. Just how do you advertise and promote something that doesn’t even exist? I’ll leave that job for those that specialise in that area thank you very much! In contrast I edited this video for my purposes, which are to document and demonstrate how I approach the creative process.

A word of warning. Although I am trying to reduce the length of my videos, I just can’t help being a chatterbox – it is a curse! Anyway this is a bit longer than I wanted, but hopefully illuminating and entertaining.

The way I shot this video was literally to set the camera rolling and start drawing and talking about what I was doing. There was two to three hours of footage to wade through, so I won’t be doing that again! Inevitably there were several creative cul-de-sacs, which I omitted from the video. Some of these blind alleys were much longer than others. There are many things that are going through my mind simultaneously; I was thinking both about the visual and acoustic aspects of the aurora borealis as well as making decisions on whether that particular idea would translate into a sculpture that would look cool, and how practical or successful it would be to make. Gradually some of the concepts start to work and a design is created.

A new thing for me with this project is having to justify myself. I couldn’t believe it! Normally with these projects (as well as my general work) what happens is that people ask, “Paul would you do this for me/us?” and I reply yes or no and with a price tag. I deliver whatever I have come up at the appropriate time and they are delighted with the results. So to be questioned about my capabilities came as a bit of a shock. So in order to satisfy the South Bank Centre which is the venue, I had to do some better drawings and thus certificate my professionalism. As you can probably tell, what I feel is a huge cultural void between people who work in a large organisation doing highly specialised roles and me, an instrument maker who works by himself and does everything to run his own business. What they fail to understand is that I fix things, but in order to fix something I need to know what the problem is and that requires speaking the same language, and I just don’t speak theirs.

However, I am not a negative person, the opposite, I will go out of my way to help people. Most people take advantage of my nature, but they the arseholes; those that don’t become my friends. It is not altruistic, I get something from the interaction too, be it feeling good about myself for helping a stranger in the street, or pride in my work because I always do my best. So because the South Bank needed help in visualising the concept, they needed sketches in context or some such jargon which meant, “Paul can you show us what it will look like outside the centre please?” Now I have an understanding of the problem, I can come up with a solution which was to draw it on the computer so I could insert the image into a photo. This avoids my inability to do pretty drawings quickly but also gave me the opportunity to work the design more, expose areas that didn’t work and fill in the gaps a bit more.

And what a useful process this has proven to be. Only positives have come out of the time that I spent doing it. Oh the irony! When I start building the sculpture things will change and develop again, but it is such a useful reference point to show people. I forget that I am exceptionally good at visualisation, I can can close my eyes and go through a whole job; most of the time what I make in my imagination is realised in the material world. I make musical instruments, so of course I am good at it. But I forget that most people don’t have that skill and when questioned I get defensive and irritable, which makes me the arsehole!